


So Full of Love I Could Barely Eat

by SalmonCenter



Series: Jasper and Alice [4]
Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human/Vampire, Gen, JaliceWeek20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27056170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SalmonCenter/pseuds/SalmonCenter
Summary: A fic for Jalice Week day one!  Human/Vampire.
Series: Jasper and Alice [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883479
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30
Collections: Jalice Week 2020





	1. Chapter 1

The rolling cart is the bane of Jasper’s existence. It takes all of his patience not to force the cart forward and snap the bad wheel that drags on the floor. It wouldn’t take much, not at all, and no one would notice if he did. Well, that isn’t exactly true, he reasons with himself. Mary-Alice would notice. She would peek her head up, pressing her hands against the little window on her door, and point to the missing wheel without having to see it. She might stick her tongue out or laugh. She might ask him, when he opens the door, if he’s angry, and that’s not something that Jasper ever wants Mary-Alice to think.

Jasper tips the cart up instead, lifting the bad wheel off the floor so that the cart will roll smoothly. He passes out breakfasts efficiently, little bowls of cereal and tiny cups of yogurt with a glass of milk. The spoons are made of paper that dissolves a few spoonfuls into the cereal, but this is the high-risk hallway. Each room is furnished with a bed and bare walls, nothing more and nothing less. Generally, a patient won’t spend more than a few days here, and even that’s pushing it, but Mary-Alice has been in the room at the end of the hall for months. Long enough to earn a few extra pieces of furniture. Long enough to scratch her name in the walls. Long enough to worm her way into Jasper’s unbeating heart. 

Jasper grins when he catches sight of Mary-Alice’s face in the window, and she smiles back, pointing to the lifted up wheel. _Broken Wheel!_ She mouths, and Jasper nods. It doesn’t surprise him that she knows even though this cart is brand new. 

“Good morning,” Jasper greets after unlocking her door, stepping inside with Mary-Alice’s breakfast. The only difference between her meal and the others is that Jasper offers her a plastic spoon. “How did you sleep?”

“I didn’t!” Mary-Alice giggles. The circles under her eyes look darker today, and her face seems a little more gaunt. Jasper frowns, closing the door behind him and handing her the yogurt. Her manic energy seeps out of the walls, prickling against his skin. “I was thinking about the cat in the window. Oh, I like strawberry!” She licks at the strawberry yogurt on her spoon, eyes glazing over as she stares at the barred window facing the garden. There’s no cat in the window. There has never been a cat in the window, but Jasper is sure that there will be, one day. 

“All night?” Jasper prompts, folding her thin blanket. She’s picked out several lines of thread again, leaving long holes. 

“All night,” Mary-Alice confirms, scooping out the last remnants of yogurt from the cup, and then letting it fall from her hands. Jasper catches it in an instant, reflexes triggered immediately. He frowns when Mary-Alice giggles again. 

“That’s not fair,” Jasper grumbles, passing her the cereal. They fall into a comfortable, familiar silence. Mary-Alice eats and Jasper scans the walls, smoothing out any etchings she’s done with her bloodied fingernails. She takes her time eating, but it’s not an issue. Jasper hands out food unnaturally fast, leaving him with at least fifteen minutes to spend with his favorite ward. 

This new friendship worries his siblings, Edward insisting that spending more than a few minutes in a locked room with a helpless human is too much of a risk. Carlisles tends to agree with him, but ultimately it’s his fault anyway. He was the one to suggest the job, a volunteer position to give him purpose. And he has found purpose in Mary-Alice. A psychotic patient whose blood smells bitter and whose smile lights up his soul. She will never leave the hospital, and he knows this, her visions overpowering even the strongest sedatives. Without the medication, she doesn’t sleep, she speaks nonsensically, and her emotions jacknife at a moment’s notice. And yet, she’s still sweet. Despite the gruelling treatments, she still laughs. Even though her room is only six by eight feet, she dances, twirling around in her hospital gown and watching it float up. 

Jasper helps her dance, holding her hand so she can spin until her pupils shake and lifting her so she can feel weightless. She becomes lighter and lighter every day.


	2. Quietly, in the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoops I thought this was a oneshot!!!

Jasper’s fist breaks through the big oak table in the living room. His motion is so smooth that the wood almost looks like foam, yielding easily under his anger and intimidation. Edward has already stepped back, but the rest of his family jumps.  
“Jasper!” Esme gasps, a hand over her heart. Fear and surprise, then a tinge of anger. Esme’s anger never lasts long, not when it comes to her children, and her compassion quickly crashes over Jasper. Understanding. Edward nods at him from a few feet away. Good. Two people (using the term loosely) are on his side. Carlisle will never go against Esme, so that’s three. 

“She’s going to _die._ ” Jasper growls out, turning to Rosalie. Her face is still impassive, but he can feel the disapproval, the anger, radiating off of her. Rosalie’s emotions have always been strong enough to challenge his own. 

“She’s in a hospital. Kidnapping her is a stupid idea!” She argues, eyes narrowing. “And-” 

“She’s not safe there. You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jasper meets her intensity, but Rose isn’t backing down. 

“It’s kidnapping!” Rose yells while Emmett holds her arms lightly. 

“She’s an adult!” Jasper counters, fists clenched until Carlisle puts a hand on his shoulder and the anger is leached from him immediately, replaced with an intense sense of calm. Jasper slumps forward slightly, letting out a tense breath. 

“Jasper is right,” Carlisle speaks steadily, guiding Jasper away from the mess of wood on the floor and towards the living room. “Mary-Alice is an adult, and her will should be held in the highest regard.” The rest of the family follows after a moment, though Rosalie keeps her hands folded in front of her chest. Her footsteps dent the wood floor as she walks. 

“She can’t make a real decision if she doesn’t know what we are.” Rosalie spits out, sitting on the sofa with a huff. There’s a terrible truth in her words that Jasper doesn’t want to acknowledge, and he looks at Edward for help instead. Suddenly, everyone is looking towards Edward, waiting for him to report on what exactly was going through Mary-Alice’s mind last night during their visit.

“Her thoughts don’t always make sense,” Edward shrugs, running a hand through his hair. “She doesn’t know what we are, but I don’t think it would make a difference if we told her. She’s not really _here_ right now. Do you understand?” Jasper nods. Of course, he does. Mary-Alice has always lived beyond them, in a world of her own. The best any one of them can do is hope she lets them in.

They go at night, wearing only their normal disguises and walking in through the front door. No one looks twice at them under the unflattering effects of the fluorescents, no need to. Nurse Hale and two doctors, just arriving for the night shift. Nothing out of the ordinary. Jasper doesn’t clock in, doesn’t sign his name on the time sheet, and keeps his head low, walking quickly through the more populated hallways with the others a step behind him.  


“She knows we’re coming.” Edward murmurs, and Jasper has to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. Even now, his family was still skeptical of the idea that Mary-Alice could see the future. Forget all of the coincidences, all of the odd behaviors that seemed to keep her alive, surely Edward would be sure after looking into her mind? “There’s something on the floor. It’s wet and-” 

“Her nasogastric tube,” Jasper grinds out, finally _finally_ reaching the end of the hall. Her door is open in less than a moment, and he’s unsurprised to see Mary-Alice waiting expectantly at the door. Her hair is a mess, her gown tattered and soiled, and she looks skinnier than she did the day prior, bones protruding sharply through her skin. There’s a long, thin tube sitting on her mattress and it’s clear to him that anything that was in her stomach is now out. “Mary-Alice, I-” 

“Shhhh!” Mary-Alice interrupts, whipping around to point at her window. Her gown spins with her, tattered streams of cloth floating in the air. “Look!” Jasper glances up, Carlisle and Edward doing the same when they make it to the door just a second later. 

The cat perched on the sill of her window means nothing to them, and in their presence it quickly scurries away, hopping onto an adjacent tree and disappearing into the night. 

“Jasper, we-” Carlisle begins, but Mary-Alice beats him to it, too. 

“We have to go!” She sings, voice crackling and hoarse from her recent self-surgery. 

She holds her arms up expectantly, and Jasper is tired of wasting time. He’s not willing to take the time and look for a wheelchair, not interested in letting Carlisle examine her first. If Mary-Alice says that it’s time to go, then it’s time to go _now._

When the police look at the security footage that morning, they don’t see Mary-Alice being kidnapped. They see the most unstable patient being rushed to the medbay after pulling out her nasogastric tube. They see two doctors follow, concerned for her deteriorating health. Then- what is surely a glitch- they disappear. The window stays shut. The door stays closed behind them, but all four are gone. 

Six weeks later, at the urging of her parents, the police pronounce Mary-Alice dead, and an empty coffin is buried in the family plot, a foot apart from Lillian Brandon.

Six weeks later, Alice Cullen paints her new name on an easel in pink, Jasper’s hand guiding her own as they practice. Her hand always pulls back up after the C, trying in vain to form four more lines that should follow her first name. She only relents after an hour, finally signing her name gracefully without Jasper’s help and being rewarded with soup and crackers for her trouble. 

There are no tubes in her new life, no medications that leave her feeling fuzzy, and no restraints when she’s upset. They take walks for hours every day, and Jasper follows her into every shop, every museum, and every park. The other ones around her, not people, cook and clean and read to her, but their voices sound like whispers compared to Jasper’s. They’re stationary in life, unmoving and unchanging, while Jasper has changed so much. He smiles more, especially when she laughs, and she’s always enthralled with the way his skin seems to shimmer in the sunlight. 

(At night, when Jasper leaves her side to eat, she carves her real name in the wood floors with a butter knife, under the bed that she won’t let Jasper move when they redecorate)


End file.
